


Red Footprints

by itdefiesimagination



Category: In the Flesh (TV)
Genre: Gen, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-03
Updated: 2015-08-03
Packaged: 2018-04-12 18:27:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4490142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itdefiesimagination/pseuds/itdefiesimagination
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The ninth, tenth, and eleventh parts are shock, depression, and stagnation, respectively, but she feels them all as a collective sadness – three shadows overlapping into one."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Red Footprints

It’s funny how people keep to themselves when something needs doing. 

It’s funny how they manage the strength of will and body to shut their windows when it’s 80 degrees; funnier still when this is no simple heat -- not the kind that fogs your windows when you’ve left the oven on too long, or the knife-sharp shine off a steering wheel in midday. This is summer with a shape to it, something you can see and feel. It – this wet, velvet dark – fills the clouds to bursting until they sag down in a heavy, blue bowl, upturned and capping the horizon. And as the clouds sink down, the blue bowl spreads in shadows across lawns, and the horizon dissipates to a bright slit, thinner and thinner, farther and farther, until all that remains is bruise-blue and hot. No one is outside to note the shift from day to night, and it’s funny because that means they must be burning up in their homes, what with their windows closed. Better still, they’ll be burning in the dark. Janet takes some small comfort in this, and for less than a minute, she no longer cares about all of the dead things on her lawn. The rest of that minute is fear and certainty. 

“They’ll come.” Sue glances up to some indeterminate point in the sky, her sleeves damp with sweat and rolled to the elbows, face all evening shadows. A rickety old bureau (or something indistinguishable, plain oak) starts to lean from its place in the row of antiques; she pushes it back into line with both hands and a hard stare, which she widens, casts over the other goods, steady as they’ve remained: old furniture, an antenna TV, silverware sets, all crisscrossing across the yard like grave markers. “They’ll come in the morning,” she repeats like she believes it. “No one’s ever out on a Sunday afternoon. Or . . . or a Sunday night, for that matter. It’s bad timing. Bad timing is all. They’ll come.” 

This heat is different, stronger somehow. Sue sweats and believes her own lies. 

Meanwhile, Janet’s body goes taught and what a lucky thing it is that her anger brings with it a certain numbness, else she’d have more regrets than she already does. She reaches out and smooths a palm over the top of Rick’s old dresser, thinks maybe the numbness isn’t (wasn’t) such a lucky thing and that maybe she’d have fewer regrets had that numbness not so often stilled her voice and limbs. Had that numbness not so often stilled her. Had that numbness not so often stilled her, she might be able to keep this dresser. To keep all of these things scattered across the lawn, and all of the things she’d thrown away, trying not to look as she cast them down 

down

down to mix with rotting food and broken glass bottles and receipts she’d never log.

“I can’t have these things anymore,” she says. And because it’s Sue she says it to, Janet is grateful for the numbness. It’s confusing. She is confused more often than she is clear. She wonders if Rick felt that numbness, if he felt his voice and limbs still, or if he could’ve fought back, had he known.  
Had she known. Had she known, she would not have been so numb. She thinks this more than she knows this. It’s confusing. 

More concrete is the fact that no one had shown up to the estate sale. That wasn’t a surprise – people don’t go looking for puddles of blood to step in, and even if they’ve stumbled into one by accident or by circumstance or both, they generally don’t go retracing those steps. They leave red footprints in the opposite direction, but they don’t look back. Janet wants desperately to make red footprints of her own, to the coast, somewhere with black sand beaches, but here she is. Here in a puddle of blood. There is a dining room table here with her. Ruined, obviously: they’d eaten there, together, before things got bad. No. Before the bad things got worse. 

(She’d known for four years, before he died the first time. Bill had known for three. Let his anger (disappointment?) show for two. Made that disappointment (shame?) felt for one. Then Rick left – anger. Then Rick died – disappointment. Then Rick came back – shame. Then the worse things became the worst thing. Singular.) )

Looking at that table made her physically ill, but knowing that she owned that table made her want to die. 

“I can’t have these things anymore,” Janet repeats, and this time Sue notices the quaver in her voice -- a string is pulled so tight that it shakes, making visible the tremors of hands otherwise imperceptible. 

“I know,” Sue says. Then again: “I know.”

But you don’t, Janet thinks. You did, once. But when your son came back, he stayed back. You knew, but you’ve forgotten now. You knew, now I am alone. You don’t know. 

One part of her (an irrational part) blames Sue, another part blames Sue’s son for living (both times); a third blames Bill, a fourth blames herself, a fifth blames this town, a sixth blames Rick; the seventh would happily sacrifice all memories of her son for a good night’s sleep, the eighth makes sure guilt over the seventh keeps her up until dawn. The ninth, tenth, and eleventh parts are shock, depression, and stagnation, respectively, but she feels them all as a collective sadness – three shadows overlapping into one. 

The pain of mourning comes not from recollection of death; it comes from all the different parts of you squirming and ripping in opposite directions without you quite understanding why. Why? If ecstasy over a son’s life doesn’t tear you apart, doesn’t leave your toes hanging out from under the covers because you can’t bring yourself to care about the cold, why does grief over a son’s death? Why is the pain of losing someone stronger than the joy of having them? Her feet are freezing now – that is the twelfth part of her. 

Sue knew this once. She does not know it now.

Now, it is 10:43 PM, and despite herself, she is surprised to see Kieren (fuzzy and far away in the blue-dark-hot) making his way down their - her - street. It's late, Janet thinks. Too late for the boys to be out on their own. Then she remembers that there is only one boy now, and that he is eighteen going on twenty three, and that this wasn't Kieren and Rick rushing home to not-quite-make a 10 PM curfew. Things are different now. How she wishes she could have both of those children back. 

He gets closer, his strides sloping, but quick. Purposeful. 

When he reaches the Macy's house, he waits at the edge of the lawn for a moment, as though stepping onto the grass were crossing some sacred threshold, or lifting the yellow tape of at a crime scene. Neither Janet nor Sue can see it, but his teeth are on edge.

"Can I have those?" he asks, without moving closer to any of the items on the lawn, instead pointing to a box of glassware that Janet had set upon the old dining room table. Though his gesture is loose and noncommittal, Janet can tell he wants that box very much. Kieren is wiser now, if not physically older, but she can still read his body language like she would a child's. There are some people who'll never grow an inch or age a year in your eyes - a parent, or a sibling, or a friend, or a partner. There are some people. Janet had known two of them.

"I'll pay you for it later," Kieren says, unwavering. It is almost too dark (too dark blue) to see his eyes, but not quite. Janet wouldn't be so lucky.

She waves his offer away without saying a word, hefts the box into her arms, and carries it to the edge of the lawn so Kieren doesn't have to move any closer to the house than he already has. Sue stretches her own arms out warily, as if to warn against carrying something so heavy. What would Sue know.

The box changes hands, and Janet realizes that she and Kieren haven't seen one another since Rick's second funeral, and haven't spoken since his first. She wonders if Kieren hates her. She wonders if she hates Kieren. She is still wondering when he carries the box out into the middle of the street and sets it down, pulls one of the glasses from the top -- a clear glass, innocuous, owner nonspecific. Odds are all the Macy's had used it at some point. Ten years in their home and then out of their home and then out of their home again: odds are Kieren had used it himself. 

He inspects this glass for a moment, his eyes half-lidding, before he lets his hand go limp, lets the glass fall to the ground. Sue makes a sharp sound of protest, but it is lost among the splintering crash. Janet makes no sound and that is lost, as well. This happens again, and again, and again, the force with which the glass is broken, the volume of Sue's cries, and the reason for Janet's silence varying with every glass. 

Here is someone who understands. Here is someone who _knows_ , Janet thinks, and she wants to tell Kieren this. But all she can do is watch:

Watch as he drops and smashes all of the little parts of her, and him, and him.

**Author's Note:**

> Tonight's theme was: Janet Macy deserves the world. Watch this space for more fics with neither story nor significance. 
> 
> Thanks for reading, friends. You guys are troopers.


End file.
